There are many systems that solicit user input pertaining to fields or other aspects of a human-readable document. For example, a software program for outputting a US IRS FORM 1040 might present questions to a human user, and on the basis of the user's responses, the software program will output the FORM 1040 that includes user-provided responses in corresponding fields (e.g., the field “Social Security Number” will contain the social security number as provided by the human user). In this case, the format for the output document is static (e.g., fixed), so the human-computer interaction (HCI) can merely present questions to the user in an order that corresponds to the output document.
Other systems for generating an output document might not know the precise format for the output document, and instead rely on a static (e.g., fixed) flow through an interview process to ask questions of the user and, on the basis of whether or not or how the user answers a particular question, the output document is dynamically structured based on the user's progression through the interview
Unfortunately, there are many situations where neither the format and/or flow of the output document nor the flow of the interview process can be known before the interview process begins. This sets up the deadlock scenario where the interview flow cannot be known from the format of the intended output document (e.g., as in the FORM 1040 case) and, at the same time, the form of the objective output document cannot be known until the interview is complete.
What is needed is a way to generate an objective output document even when (1) the completed form of the objective document is not known a priori, and (2) even when the completed form of the interview flow is not known a priori.
What is needed is a technique or techniques to improve over legacy techniques and/or over other considered approaches. Some of the approaches described in this background section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.